Related computing systems, such as virtual machines running on a common host machine or physical computing devices connected to a common network, may often encounter instances of the same file or files. For example, a high percentage of files within virtual machines that run the same operating system and/or originate from the same base image may be identical. Because of this, related computing systems may redundantly perform identical or similar resource-consuming computing operations (such as security scans) on instances of the same file.
In order to avoid wasting time and/or computing resources on potentially redundant security scans, some traditional security systems may generate and store hashes of scanned files. These traditional security systems may later generate hashes of files that are yet to be scanned and compare the newly generated hashes of the unscanned files to the stored hashes of the previously scanned files. These traditional security systems may scan unscanned files whose hashes do not match any hashes of previously scanned files while skipping scans of unscanned files whose hashes do match hashes of previously scanned files, thus preventing duplicative scans. Unfortunately, hashing operations may also be time- and resource-intensive operations. In some cases, generating a file hash for a file may be more resource-intensive than performing a security scan for the same file. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for performing security scans.